Program Management · Partner Relationships · Developer Engagement
Hartti Suomela
Building bridges between technology companies and the markets, partners, and developers they need to grow.
A track record of turning startup ambition into market traction — market-entry strategy, partnership development, and community-building (CES, SXSW, Slush) for Nordic tech companies expanding into the U.S.
About
I help technology companies find their footing in new markets — through partnerships, program design, and the kind of on-the-ground community building that turns a cold market into a warm one.
At the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, I advise Finnish technology and startup companies entering the U.S. market. Before this, I led Team Finland's North America ICT/Digitalization program at Business Finland, building and running the partnerships and events that gave Nordic startups a foothold in Silicon Valley: CES and GDC breakfasts, SXSW, RSA, and Slush, alongside board work with Nordic Innovation House.
What ties it together is program management with a partnerships lens: identifying who needs to be in the room, designing the program that gets them there, and following through until the relationship sticks.
Outside of work, I stay hands-on with software — most recently building a Python scraper for archiving old sports tournament results using Claude Code. I like understanding the tools and platforms I'm helping other companies sell into.
M.Sc. International Business, Helsinki University of Technology. Fluent in English and Finnish.
What I do
Program Management
Designing and running the programs that get startups in front of the right people — from a single CES breakfast to a multi-year market-entry track. Organized or contributed to [X] events (CES, GDC, SXSW, RSA, Slush) over 8 years. Google Project Management Certificate (2023).
Partner Relationships
Years of building and maintaining the partner network — investors, event organizers, government counterparts, Nordic peer organizations — that made market entry possible for [X]+ Finnish companies. Board member, Nordic Innovation House (2014–2019).
Developer & Community Engagement
Comfortable being the technical-enough person in the room: built [X] side projects (Python, Swift, Claude Code), organized developer- and founder-facing events reaching [X]+ attendees, and still ship code for fun.
Experience
Advising Finnish technology companies on U.S. market entry, partnerships, and funding guidance.
Led Team Finland's North America ICT/Digitalization program. Generated business opportunities for Finnish tech companies across LA and the SF Bay Area, with a focus on ports and sporting venues. Organized CES & GDC breakfasts and contributed to SXSW, RSA, and Slush programming.
Business development and market-entry guidance for Finnish companies across maritime, mining, and ICT sectors in Australia and New Zealand.
Advised Finnish technology startups on U.S. market entry — market analysis, value proposition, and partnerships.
Advised Finnish technology startups on business strategy and U.S. market entry, specializing in software, mobile, and fitness/wellness technology.
Full history on LinkedIn.
Side projects
I build things to stay sharp. A few currently live:
paivo.suomela.online
A digital catalog of my father Päivö Suomela's paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Built with Astro, ~250 works, image pipeline and metadata workflow built from scratch.
ultimatestats.org
Statistics platform for ultimate frisbee.
archive.ultimatestats.org
An archive of historical tournament results, scraped and restored from the Wayback Machine and original sources (Python, Claude Code).
This site
Also built with Claude Code, hosted on Cloudflare Pages.